Bulletin No. 44 of the Department of Agriculture gives the residuum of an exhausting examination of 3,398 warbler stomachs, from seventeen species of birds, and the result is:  94.99 per cent of insect food,—­mostly bad insects, too,—­and 5.01 per cent vegetable food.  What more can any forester ask of a bird?

[Illustration:  THE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK “The Potato-bug Bird,” Greatest Enemy of the Potato Beetles From the “American Natural History”]

THE SPARROWS.—­All our sparrows are great consumers of weed seeds.  Professor Beal has calculated the total quantity consumed in Iowa in one year,—­in the days when sparrows were normally numerous,—­at 1,750,000 pounds.

THE AMERICAN GOLDFINCH as a weed destroyer has few equals.  It makes a specialty of the seeds of the members of the Order Compositae, and is especially fond of the seeds of ragweed, thistles, wild lettuce and wild sunflower.  But, small and beautiful as this bird is, there are hundreds of thousands of grown men in America who would shoot it and eat it if they dared!

THE HAWKS AND OWLS.—­Let no other state repeat the error that once was made in Pennsylvania when that state enacted in 1885, her now famous hawk-and-owl bounty law.  In order to accomplish the wholesale destruction of her birds of prey, a law was passed providing for the payment of a bounty of fifty cents each for the scalps of hawks and owls.  Immediately the slaughter began.  In two years 180,000 scalps were brought in, and $90,000 were paid out for them.  It was estimated that the saving to the farmers in poultry amounted to one dollar for each $1,205 paid out in bounties.

The awakening came even more swiftly than the ornithologists expected.  By the end of two years from the passage of “the hawk law,” the farmers found their fields and orchards thoroughly overrun by destructive rats, mice and insects, and they appealed to the legislature for the quick repeal of the law.  With all possible haste this was brought about; but it was estimated by competent judges that in damages to their crops the hawk law cost the people of Pennsylvania nothing less than two million dollars.

Moral:  Don’t make any laws providing for the destruction of hawks and owls until you have exact knowledge, and know in advance what the results will be.

In the space at my disposal for this subject, it is impossible to treat our species of hawks and owls separately.  The reader can find in the “American Natural History” fifteen pages of text, numerous illustrations and many figures elucidating this subject.  Unfortunately Dr. Fisher’s admirable work on “The Hawks and Owls” has long been out of print, and unobtainable.  There are, however, a few observations that must be recorded here.